Eternity of Fire
by PsYcHoTiC-BeTtY
Summary: Victoria wants revenge. Bella wants to die.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Do not own Twilight.

Victoria comes for her two years after Edward leaves her.

Bella is not surprised but Jacob is.

There is no time to react. Jacob is incapacitated first – thrown against a cliff wall and slumping in an unconscious heap at its bottom- Bella collides with a giant maple, her spine snapping with a sickening crack.

Why she is not dead Bella does not know_, just her luck_ she supposes, chucking ironically. Leaves flutter against her skin, burnt oranges and reds; pale imitations of the fiery halo of hair that now hovers over her prone form.

Victoria grins viciously, all sharp teeth and dripping venom -victory shining in her ruby red eyes. Bella remains impassive as the venom that leaks from Victoria's mouth drips into the open cuts on her face and like acid, the venom burns and burns. All Bella can worry about though is Jake. She wonders if he has woken up, if he has somehow gotten away – she hopes with all that she has left that he has. She does not want him to die for her mistakes.

Victoria begins railing against Bella, snarling about the fate of her mate, James. For Bella, those memories seem so long ago, more of a dream than anything else. She notices that Victoria has stopped talking and is just staring.

Bella waits and waits, longs for the explosion– the inevitable fallout. She is not disappointed. Victoria goes off like a firecracker.

"Aren't you going to say anything you pathetic, little human? Beg for your life; beg for your precious Edward. I want to see every disgusting tear. I want to hear every disgusting sob. I'm going to memorize every detail of your death –every moan, every scream and then I'm going to show it to your little mate. I'm going to make him feel everything, make him see everything – so he knows exactly how it feels, I'm going to make sure it is burned into his memory and then I'm going to burn him."

Bella winces and whimpers flashes of images of Edward being ripped apart and set on fire; she can almost smell the burnt flesh. Victoria is smiling now; she has gotten the reaction she wanted but Bella's next words make her freeze.

"He's gone you know. Left me for his _distractions,_" snarls Bella viciously, triumphantly. It's a little disconcerting Bella thinks to be able to express this much emotion and yet not feel anything below her neck.

"I wasn't good for him so he and his family up and left...TWO years ago. You're a little late Victoria and your plans are a lot useless. It's even a little funny maybe a little tragic when you really look at it, he killed James for me but he ended up not wanting me so James kind of died for no reason. I guess were both shit out of luck!" Bella chuckles a little and Victoria is frozen, not a twitch of any muscle; but her face, her face is what draws Bella in. It is twisted in rage and before Bella can blink Victoria is on her, her head in Victoria's hands, and its being smashed into the ground.

Bella sees stars and thinks she hears a crack. Victoria is wailing above her and Bella can barely understand her words. Then they both freeze – all Bella can smell is the blood – it is everywhere. Victoria's eyes turn to her, they are black with thirst, and her smile is cruel.

"Oh Bella, Bella, Bella" whispers Victoria, "I have the most glorious plan. You are going to suffer as I suffer. Like I suffer and suffer and suffer. " She punctuates each word with a blow to Bella's head and now Bella can barely see anything and she can no longer hold in her whimpers of pain.

"You're going to suffer forever Bella, forever and ever and ever," she singsongs. Bella thinks Victoria has gone mad. Everything is getting fuzzy and black around the edges, there is no more pain and Bella no longer even cares what's happening, she just drifts.

All she hears are Victoria's maniacal whispers of forever, then through the abyss there is a searing pain in her neck, then there is fire –white-hot fire, and it consumes her. The last thing she hears is an inhumane wailing.

Bella hears death in the wailing.

Victoria hears revenge.


	2. Chapter 2

_Day One_

Victoria thinks the girl's screams are the most glorious thing she has ever heard. She memorizes everything about them.

_A little present for Edward_, she thinks.

Meanwhile, the mutt has yet to wake from his unfortunate meeting with the cliff wall. She is not worried though, he will wake eventually and then the real fun will begin.

She has relocated both the mutt and the human to a more secluded area and now she waits for the screams to stop and the heartbeat to stutter to a halt.

She waits for the mutt to open his eyes.

She has plans, so many plans.

_Day Two _

The girl has stopped screaming, she has moved on to a sickly whimpering.

It disgusts Victoria; she misses the screaming.

The mutt is awake, and he struggles against the hold that she has on him. It is no use, she is too strong and he is too weak. He does not stand a chance.

He rails against her, screaming and threatening and all of it is for the little human, the little Bella.

Victoria is strangely fascinated.

It makes what she is about to do even more satisfying. She smirks at the boy and he wisely quiets.

The girl's heartbeat is fluttering now, fading and fading and fading.

It is almost time.

_Day Three_

She and the boy are waiting now, with only the sound of the girl's erratic heartbeats for company.

The boy wisely gave up fighting hours ago, she thinks. It is either that or he's coming up with some master plan. _Good luck with that_, she thinks.

It is then she notices the absolute stillness in the forest, not a sound for miles. She smiles, teeth flashing in the sunlight.

The boy howls beside her, sobbing and renewing his struggle to escape, to help, to save the poor little human. Yet she is not a human now is she and she never will be again.

She thinks she sees the boys heart break, and has never seen such a beautiful sight in her whole life, except of course for the show that is about to begin.

Everything is still silent, but then the girl twitches, muscles tensing and flexing, skin shimmering in the sunlight.

Many things happen at once.

A flash of red.

A streak of white.

It is the collision of past and present.

This is where the world opens itself up and swallows itself whole.

It is the beginning of the end.


	3. Chapter 3

Her eyelids flutter open at the same time that her body tenses.

Everything is too loud, too bright, too much and still there are echoes of the fire along her limbs, in her apparent dead heart, behind her eyes that both see too much and not enough.

Where is she?

What happened?

Then she smells it.

It is the foulest scent that she thinks has ever graced her nose. It smells like dampness, moss and the most unappetizing of things. It smells like a threat, it smells like a challenge and with those thoughts the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and a vicious growl builds in her chest, erupting out of her mouth.

The growl both frightens and excites her. Something tells her that this is not normal, that this is not who she is but God help her it is the most amazing feeling. There is a voice in the back of her head whispering the most sinister things.

_Kill._

_Destroy. _

Who is she to deny such a voice? With that final thought, she rolls into a defensive crouch snarling, venom dripping and searching for her prey. In less than a second, she zeroes in on a creature with fiery red hair and a cruel smile but she is not the one. She is not the smell.

Then she sees it, the smell. It's all russet brown fur and glinting canines. It is the enemy and it must die. She knows this because this is her nature. She was made to destroy creatures like this.

_Kill_, it whispers.

_Destroy_.

_It must die_.

So she lunges. She is nothing more than a flash of white before she is on it. The smell is overpowering and she gags on the venom pouring from her mouth. It, the creature, writhes underneath her, howling. The red haired creature is laughing manically in the background, but she could care less.

_Kill._

_Destroy._

White marble hands gripping, tearing at russet brown fur. Teeth sharp against her skin, trying to find purchase, trying to survive. Howling. Growling. Snarling. A mess of salvia and venom coats her. Hands clench, a sharp twist to the left and then to the right.

_Crack._

The body falls limp from her hands. The wretched smell is already fading in wake of the creature's death.

The voices rejoice at her triumph.

The wolf is dead.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I do not own Twilight or any of its characters.

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Her attention shifts from the sight of the dead wolf to the laughter of the creature with red hair. She is suddenly very wary; she should not trust this red haired woman but she needs answers.

"Who are you?" she snarls. The woman stops laughing abruptly but a cruel smirk remains.

"My name is Victoria, and I have to say young Bella that you have played into my plans more brilliantly than even I could have imagined."

_Bella._

That name is frighteningly familiar to her and fills her with a sense of foreboding and nausea that is only heightened when she glances back to the lump of russet brown fur. However, before her thoughts turn into a sickening certainty she is distracted by a blur of red.

Victoria is nothing more than flashes but with her heightened senses, she can pick out the direction and therefore anticipates the impact a second before it occurs. She has Victoria by the throat and pinned to a nearby tree before Victoria even recognizes that there has been a shift in power.

Venom is already flowing freely, dripping from her teeth and she wants nothing more that to tear this woman apart, to destroy her. She knows that whatever this woman says, whatever she is about to do will alter her beyond anything she has ever known. Beyond even, the how and the why and most importantly the _what_ she is now.

This woman leaves nothing but destruction in her wake and she, _Bella_, the voice whispers, is starting to believe that she is no different.

She appears to be the same as this woman. They are glittering skin, sharp teeth and feral growls and when Victoria begins to speak, not even fighting the hold she has on her, everything the girl has speculated about becomes a horrifying reality.

Victoria's voice is high and bell like, the voice of an innocent but such a notion is ruined by the vindictive sneer that curls her lips as she hisses a story, _a truth, _whispers the voice, which the girl, _Bella_, can no longer ignore.

"Ah, young Bella, your story is one of woe. You see your mate, your precious Edward killed my James; so it seems only fair that I return the favour does it not?" Victoria continues as if the girls' world is not crumbling before her, as if the girl has not just gone deaf to the world.

_Bella,_ hisses the voice and with that, the flashes begin.

They are flashes of a boy with bronze hair and golden eyes and quick as lightening movements; flashes of a dark room, shattered mirrors and the echo of the fire and burning on her wrist.

She drops Victoria to the moss covered ground and clutches her wrist in remembered pain. Victoria continues unerringly, viciously.

There is no longer a pause in the flashes, _the memories,_ they come all at once and all with the force of a thousand agonies.

_A paper cut, bright ruby red blood. _

_A fair-haired man, Jasper, lunging at her._

_The bronze haired boy, _Edward! Oh God, she clutches her head in pain. _Edward with her on the path in the woods. _

_"I don`t want you..." A flash of white and then Edward is gone._

_Blackness. Rustling. Rescue._

_Motorcycles. She needs to fix them up. She needs to hear his voice._

_Free falling. The wind whistles by her. The impact has all the force of a freight train. _

_Blackness. Burning lungs. Drowning._

_Rescue._

_Her saviour is..._

_A russet skinned boy with dark eyes and a wide smile._

_Werewolf._

"Jacob!" She howls. She is dry sobbing now, for she will never truly cry again and the memories keep coming, playing to a soundtrack of her sobs.

They come, they come, and they come until there are no more.

She does not know which way is up and which way is down, she can't see, she can't hear.

_Oh God_, _what has she done_?

The voices are at once unanimous and then they are quiet.

Her name is Bella Swan.

And she has just murdered her best friend.

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A/N: Review! Review! Review!


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I do not own Twilight or its characters.

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Her realization struck her immobile.

_Jake was dead._

_She had killed Jake._

The statements played in a continuous loop through her mind, and the guilt and disgust were overpowering. She remembers thinking that after Edward left, Jake had become her own personal sun. She had basked in his companionship. He had helped to put her back together and in one swift, inhumane motion she had undone everything, she had plunged herself into a darkness that was wholly unconquerable and infinite.

She had just lost everything.

_Again._

The pain was unbearable and while her body remained frozen, her new mind – a mind that housed a monster- was a constant whirlwind of thoughts, smells, colours and motions, blurring to the point where she believed that at any moment she would gag on the darkness that was consuming her.

A dark chuckle entered the haze of her mind, and all at once Bella had something to focus on. Her gaze shifted and fixed on the form of Victoria. At some point, Victoria had slipped from her hold and was now lounging against a tree about three metres away.

She looked nothing short of gleeful, a notion that was only supported when she deigned to open her mouth, "I thoroughly enjoyed the show. The look on the mutt's face right before you snapped his neck was priceless. I fully expected waterworks – but once again, one has to take into account one's company – a wolf and a vampire – not exactly conducive to tears are they?"

Through her little speech, Bella could focus on nothing but the growing growls and hisses in her mind. The voices had returned whispering dark things, vicious things. Her rage was building once again and Victoria was none the wiser.

"Oh Bella, even without the tears it warms my cold, dead heart. How does it feel Bella to lose everything? How does it feel knowing that you will forever have to remember this, to the end of your existence?"

Victoria was no longer calm and gleeful; she was shrieking with her fury, she was lost in her madness. Bella absently wondered if this is what she would soon look like. Revenge had driven Victoria mad. Would it be the grief or the guilt that would turn Bella's mind, shatter it beyond repair. Maybe it would be both. Maybe she was already there.

Bella could only wait to find out.

Victoria was still shrieking and hissing her taunts.

Slowly but surely the voices grew, harmonized and hissing venomous commands. The darkness was beginning to close in again, the monster rattling at the cage demanding release.

"...you will remember every detail; you will remember his wilting body beneath your hand and the sound of his heartbeat stuttering to halt, even his stench fading..."

Bella's body unlocked, but she did not move. Her lips pulled back, teeth gleaming in the sunlight and venom pooling in her mouth.

The whispers in her mind and the rattling of a cage became a cacophony of sound. The monster wanted out.

"...you will remembering everything and will know that it is your fault, you will be to blame for eternity and I will never let you forget --"

Before Victoria could even finish her threat, Bella had snapped and sprung.

The monster had been released once again but this time Bella would not regret it.

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A/N: Review!


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Still don't own Twilight or any of its characters.

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Bella's leap lands her directly on Victoria, scrabbling for purchase. Nails dig deep in marbled flesh, tearing anything they can find, leaving Victoria a mess of dripping venom and torn flesh.

Victoria, however, strikes back just as fast. She grabs Bella and flings her across the grassy opening leaving her to sail through the trunks of the oncoming trees. With each impact, there is a resounding crash, in the otherwise silent forest.

Bella finally plummets into the dirt, gouging out a crater-sized hole, dirt and plant life fluttering all around her from the impact. She notices that she is nursing a shoulder at an odd angle and a deformed hand. Both are a product of Victoria's haphazard action of getting Bella away from her. Both are throbbing with pain.

This does not stop Bella and she is again on her feet, crouching to attack. However, it is a plan formed to late and before she can even blink Victoria has her in a vice grip, arms locked around her body leaving her immobile; teeth scraping ever so gently up and down her neck.

"I could easily rip your head off right now, little one."

Bella's body goes rigid, panting uselessly, looking for the right words. Where are the words that will grant her her absolution?

"Why don't you? It's evident that you want to, that you need to. I'm the reason James is dead, why you'll forever be alone. You need to destroy me because if you don't, you'll never avenge James, you'll never be satisfied."

The pressure from Victoria's teeth on her neck continues to grow and the light grazing becomes a brutal slashing. Victoria tears at her neck and venom flows down her body, soaking her already stained clothes.

Bella thinks she has won.

Victoria is a blur of madness as she moves from her neck, and is at once everywhere, tearing and clawing. Bella does not put up a fight. This is what she wants; this is what she deserves, to die without a fight, to die without dignity.

_Just like Jake_, she thinks, but cringes away from the memory.

Bella can feel that her body is almost depleted of venom and the last step is for Victoria to tear her apart and let her burn, leaving her as nothing more than a memory and a pile of ashes.

A welcome relief fills her that is abruptly halted, when Victoria is suddenly no longer tearing into her but across the clearing, eyes black with hunger, a hunger for her destruction.

_Why has she stopped? _Bella moans in her mind. She needs to keep going. She needs to finish this. The only inkling of Bella's thoughts is the moan of pain she releases as she feels Victoria's venom coursing through her, battling her venom for purchase in her body. It is preventing her from healing.

_However, she doesn't want to heal, she wants to die! _The thought is nothing but an echo in her mind.

"Please," she whispers desperately, pathetically. "Please."

Vitoria only smirks and saunters closer to her.

"No." Victoria's answer is a sibilant hiss, "I will never destroy you."

Bella expected no less, Victoria has never given her anything she has asked for and this time is no different. The venom loss is slowly but surely disorienting her and Victoria becomes nothing but a blur of red hair and white skin. Before she falls into the haze of pain she vaguely hears Victoria whisper something,

"I won't destroy you, but I'm going to have fun watching you destroy yourself."

Then there is nothing but darkness as her body writhes and tries to fight venom with venom, as it tries to heal.

When she emerges from the haze maybe minutes, hours or days later, Victoria is gone.

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A/N: I like it when you review, so please review. :)


	7. Chapter 7

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A/N: Do not own Twilight.

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Bella sits alone in the clearing watching the progression of her shadow across the grass. She thinks of nothing- her mind blank.

It is with a start that she realizes the sun has set and the moon has come out. The clearing is bathed in an ethereal light and patches of midnight but she sees and hears everything with a startling clarity- from the miniscule flap of insect wings to the whisper of the breeze trailing through grass.

The experience is overwhelming and the regret and longing make her gasp. How she wishes for her frail human hearing, for her weak human eyesight- for a clumsiness long gone. In a sick twist of irony, she wishes for humanity that she never fully appreciated, one that she will never get back. She is in limbo, for she never wanted this life without _him_ and yet now she has it, she has been damned to it; damned to suffer alone, to walk alone for eternity.

Her musings are cut short by the burn in her throat, now a scorching heat that has only built over the time she has spent sitting in the clearing. It is almost unbearable and without conscious thought, she has risen in a crouch, ears and nose searching for her prey. She hears the hooves of deer that bring with them the unappetizing scent of moss and damp earth, but it will have to do. If she does one thing for the rest of her eternity, it will be the abstinence from human blood.

The very thought of attacking, of murdering another human being, like she has done to Jake makes her sick, makes her wish for a death that is no longer available to her. With that reassurance in mind and with great reluctance she releases her mind and her body to the hunt. She lets the monster once again out of its cage and she is off sailing silently through the trees – nothing but dark blurs in passing.

She hears their quickened heartbeats as she gains on them, their hooves grinding into the dampened earth, anxious of a threat but already too late to avoid it, to escape. However, before she can pounce another heartbeat abruptly enters the mix with an aroma that makes her mouth water. It would taste wonderful, it would be the best thing she has ever tasted, this she knows and in less than a millisecond she has changed directions and all senses but her smell have shut down. The desire is so strong that she cannot see, she cannot hear, all she knows is that she must have this, she won't survive if this heartbeat gets away.

She is less than a hundred feet away when she pounces; using her sense of smell to guide her she sails through the air and lands directly on her prey. It goes down with a sickening crunch of bone and squish of flesh and she uses her teeth to tear into its neck, grinding its body into the earth with the force of her grasp. She leeches it of its blood before the first drop spills from her attack. She leaves nothing and drops its empty carcass to the forest floor.

It is only then when she opens her eyes that sees what she has done. She turns away, falling to her knees and begins to dry heave but it is no use, that taste of human blood is just too good.

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A/N: Hoped you enjoyed the chapter! Reviews are always appreciated.


	8. Chapter 8

**A.N: Do not own Twilight or its characters. **

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She stares at the cooling body of the man for a long time.

She wonders how he came to be in this part of the forest; it is so far out and before the hunt she had detected no foreign heartbeat.

She wonders at the impossibility.

She wonders if he had a family, if they are out looking for him.

She imagines the devastation, an empty casket, living a life without closure, living a life without the who and the why. She imagines the burning anger.

She has destroyed so many lives today.

She gently kneels down and lifts the body of the man into her arms, once she has him firmly in her grasp she stands and abruptly turns and sprints even deeper into the forest, to a place no one will ever look.

She spends hours digging the deepest hole she can, and gently places his body in the hollowed out space. She refills the hole with dirt, packing it until the area looks undisturbed.

She hovers over the makeshift grave and sobs her apologies, her regrets, aching for a forgiveness she does not deserve and will never receive.

She buried her first victim today and with him, she has buried Isabella Swan.

_ . _

She leaves the area immediately, heading back to the body of her best friend.

She reaches him in record time and sweeps his limp body into her arms. The fur brushes her arms and neck. Her reaction is involuntary and she begins to sob into his soft fur. She brings his body even tighter to her and sets off toward the reservation.

At least one person today will receive a proper burial. At least one family will receive closure.

She makes it within fifty feet of the reservation before she is attacked.

A large grey wolf leaps from the side, latching onto her arm and nearly ripping it off. It dangles from her shoulder, held together by a few tendons. Other wolves begin to circle her, snarling and snapping. They want revenge; they see what she has done. They begin closing in.

In the attack, she has dropped Jake, and he lies prone before her. She drops to her knees and pushes him gently towards the closest wolves, urging them to take him if they are to fight her.

"Please," she whispers. She needs to know that he will be safe. The closest wolf, a small brown one, inches forward and grabs Jake's body by the scruff dragging him toward the rest of the pack. They hover around Jake for a minute before they let out a harmonious grieving howl.

Then they turn back toward her, murder in their eyes.

She jumps to her feet, her good arm holding her other arm in place, willing the venom to heal quickly.

Her phantom heart is beating wildly. She can't look at them, the guilt is too much, so she does the only thing she can, she runs. The wolves give chase.

She hears heavy paws beating behind her and one wolf gets too close, his teeth finding purchase in her side. It rips open and venom pours from the wound. The pain makes her fall, she rolls through the mud and leaves and is up again in a second. Another wolf latches onto her leg, dislocating her knee. She whimpers in pain but keeps going.

Up ahead she sees a hanging tree branch and with her good arm, she grabs it hoisting herself up. She continues to climb to the highest point and from there she jumps from tree to tree. Eventually the wolves become nothing but distant whispers and she is left running in silence.

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**A.N: Hope you liked the chapter. Review!**


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: I do not own Twilight.

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For the first year of this new life she wanders.

After her first human kill, she dogmatically adheres to the animal diet, but no matter how hard she tries she slips early on. She kills a young boy. She later finds out his name was _Ben_ and he was only _ten_. She starves herself for a month.

She tries again but after _Ben_ there's _Sarah_- a 32 year old mother of two.

Then _Stacey_, a 17 year old with an early acceptance to Harvard.

_Rachel _– 22 years old and just graduated from college.

_Dan_ – 44 years old and father of three.

_David – _25 years old with a fiancé named Karen.

She stops keeping track of names and stories when she kills a man named Charlie. He was a police officer and the similarities make her heave gasping sobs over his rapidly cooling corpse. This man could have easily been her father.

From then on each victim becomes a nameless face. She no longer keeps to the forests; she can walk freely among the humans and while the temptation is always there it only simmers in the back of her mind because she always keeps herself full; well full enough.

She no longer feels the guilt. It is just a pinprick on her conscious, a little ache above her breastbone that is easily shrugged off and forgotten. She thinks of nothing when she lures the unsuspecting frail humans into darkened alleys, as she sinks her teeth into their pulsing arteries, draining them of the very blood that use to run through her veins. She feels their veins shrink and dry up, their bodies limp and ragged in their defeat. She hears their pleas that eventually quiet and she is there for their very last breath. Now, she only worries where she will hide the body, how she will disguise it. She wonders about her next meal. She is always hungry.

She follows this routine until she finds herself in some city on the east coast. She's listlessly trailing up and down the streets waiting for nightfall. She can't wait for nightfall, she's hungry and she needs her next meal. She also needs some new clothes and is in desperate need of a shower. But she will wait; it is easier to burglarize stores at night then during the day.

She's making her third circle around this block when the bookstore on the corner catches her eye. It is not the bookstore itself but one of the books displayed in the shop window. She crosses the street and peers into the window. The book is a new release, par t of their travel section. It is a guide to backpacking across Europe.

On the front of the book is a picture of the Roman Colosseum.

_Italy._

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_A/N: Review!_


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